Truth and Fiction

Last night I finally had the chance to hear This American Life's retraction of the Mike Daisey story.  I had already read Mike's response to the retraction, as well as listened to Luke Burbank's interview of Mike that occurred well before the brouhaha.  I felt empathy for Ira, who felt both betrayed and sorry for his own mistakes.  I respect him for owning up to his own mistakes.  I think Mike is trying to own up to his own mistakes, but he is not communicating his point well.  This is ironic (don't you think?) given his acumen as a storyteller, but perhaps the emotions are too strong for him to speak clearly about it. 

One thing is absolutely clear: Mike Daisey lied to the TAL staff repeatedly during the fact-checking on the story.  He represented his story as holding up to journalistic vigor in various emails with producers when he knew some parts of the story were not accurate, and he lied about the name and contact information of his translator.  He should fess up to that, strongly and in no uncertain terms when he talks about this issue.  Admitting it on the Retraction piece was like pulling teeth, and in his subsequent statements he ignores this fact (hah!) completely.

Less clear is Mike's credibility on the rest of the story.  I understand why Ira doesn't trust him when Mike disagrees with the translator's version of events.  But I also heard clearly that the events took place two years ago, and were not necessarily a big part of the translator's life.  So her memories aren't guaranteed to be 100% accurate.  Plus the translator does still live in an oppressive regime, and may not want to publicly confirm some facts, like underage workers, that could anger the government.  So there is the possibility Mike is telling the truth about those facts.

This gets us to the big picture.  Mike Daisey says that despite the deliberate inaccuracies, his monologue is still truthful.  I've written before that artistic discourse can contain paradoxes, and that logic can contain irrational elements.  I do believe that fictional art can lead us to understand ourselves better, and perhaps lead us to have greater empathy for other perspectives.  Self-awareness can be truth, but I don't know if I can define empathy as truth.  Empathy is a good thing, no, a great thing.  But is it truth?  This is where Mike falls down.  I believe he should stand up for his monologue as a work of beauty, something that will make you feel more.  As he puts it, "But understand that if you felt something that connected you with where your devices come from—that is not a lie. That is art. That is human empathy, and it is real, and even if you curse my name I hope you’ll recognize that and continue reading, caring, and thinking."  I agree that it is art.  But it is not truth.  


I enjoy watching biographical movies.  Ray, Man in the Moon, Topsy-Turvy, all very entertaining.  I gain greater respect for the artists represented in these movies.  I also know that the movies aren't 100% factual.  Andy Kaufman had several girlfriends who were composited into one character in the movie.  Ray had scenes "fictionalized for dramatization purposes."  That would be great if Mike Daisey would say, "some scenes of my monologue were fictionalized for dramatic effect."  And if he were to make clear in the monologue or in the program notes for the monologue that it uses a "combination of fact, memoir, and dramatic license to tell its story." But he seems to have a hang-up about 'fiction.'  I think he is afraid that if he admits the work is fictionalized, people won't have the emotional connection he is trying to make.  I also think he truly believes in the cause of the Chinese workers.  That is his truth.  But he oversold his work in trying to convey this truth, which will only hurt his efforts in the end.

Music, unjustly

I promised to write about unjust uses of music, which is a tricky thing to do.  One can think about the army blasting rock music at Noriega to get him to surrender.  When googling for an example of this, I found this Wikipedia page on Music in Psychological Operations.  Besides Noriega, it mentions using loud music in interrogations at Guantanamo and in Iraq.  Andy Worthington has a detailed description of music used for torture.  One could ask why the torturers use music at all.  Why don't they just use loud white noise, or randomized sounds?  I have a feeling it is because of the perceived organization of music.  Music doesn't allow our brains to ignore it, because it has patterns that can be recognized.  It seems the most effective music torture uses music styles unfamiliar to the detainees. 

When CIA operatives spoke to ABC News in November 2005, as part of a ground-breaking report into the use of waterboarding and other torture techniques on “high-value detainees” held in secret prisons, they reported that, when prisoners were forced to listen to Eminem’s Slim Shady album, “The music was so foreign to them it made them frantic.” And in May 2003, when the story first broke that music was being used by US PsyOps teams in Iraq, Sgt. Mark Hadsell, whose favored songs were said to be “Bodies” by Drowning Pool and “Enter the Sandman” by Metallica, told Newsweek, “These people haven’t heard heavy metal. They can’t take it.” (Worthington)

 The listeners' brains can tell that there are structures to comprehend, but they have no cultural context to help out.  Add to this looking "through a glass darkly", the music used is played at unbearable volumes, and usually includes very heavy bass sounds.  Studies have shown how intense low frequencies will disrupt the physical processes of the body, causing nausea and breathing problems.  This physical distress, accompanied by pain in the ears and the mental stress of being interrogated in the first place, is indeed very torturous.

What about using music to convey a message the composer or performer never intended?  Benjamin Britten was a well-known pacifist who wrote his War Requiem to portray the horrors of war.  He dedicated it to friends who died during or because of WW II.  James Horner appropriated the Sanctus of this requiem to accompany the Trojans marching to war in the movie Troy, a movie that celebrates war rather than lamenting it.  Janis Joplin wrote "Mercedes Benz" in 1970 as a commentary on the consumerism of society.  She holds up the desire for goods as a ridiculous thing to pray for, with fancy cars and TVs as shallow means of happiness.  And then in 1995 Mercedes-Benz used it to get consumers to buy their car.    Various musicians have asked politicians to stop using their music for campaigns.

Then there is the flip side, musicians who write music as propaganda.  The Nazis employed musicians to compose anthems for their cause. Toby Keith wrote "The Taliban" to support the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.  This is a trickier matter than the others, since the musician could be completely sincere in supporting that cause.  It takes more objectivity to determine if the cause itself is unjust, which is clear in the case of Nazis but cloudy with the "War on Terror."

The horror of using music in an unjust way is the way music directly touches our souls.  We can't listen away from music, like we can look away from a visual work of art.  Music entrains our physical bodies with visceral responses to its rhythms and harmonies, even as the emotional content pushes at our psyches.

Humanitarian Music Theory

Yesterday I listened to a TED talk by Bryan Stevenson, which got me fired up.  I started thinking about what I could do to combat injustice in the world.  I am a music professor, with five young children, so my time and money resources are somewhat limited.  I can't just write a big check, though I do donate as much as I can.  I also can't camp out protesting at a courthouse or capitol building, I've got to chauffeur kids to piano lessons and violin lessons and karate and dance class and cub scouts.  Not to mention my job, though I have flexibility this year with my sabbatical.  I'm also not a lawyer, my training is in the musical arts and in science.  So my thoughts went to ways that I can bring that training to battling injustice.  Just as I was thinking about this, I heard a story on NPR about the Stockton Symphony wrestling with this issue themselves.  They commissioned a children's piece by Avner Dorman, using narration of an Israeli folk tale. 

I applaud the efforts, though I wonder if the narration takes away from the power of the music to touch the soul with enough power to change lives.  The dialogue imposes a strict interpretation on the music, instead of allowing more individualized reactions that could be more meaningful.  I never found "Peter and the Wolf" to be as emotionally powerful as "In the Hall of the Mountain King" when I was a child.  So what would be a good example of humanitarian music?  If the music is presented without a program, how can we trust audiences to get the right message?  How does one compose or perform music that portrays justice? 

I think it is not the subject matter of music that matters, it is the location of the performances that communicates justice.  In that regards, the Stockton Symphony has done well, performing at schools in the more impoverished areas in town, and giving out free tickets.  El Sistema has come under fire recently for being too political in its connections to Hugo Chavez.  But the major point of the program, to bring beautiful music to the people who need it most, is so inspiring that it has engendered similar efforts in the US and Australia (probably others as well, feel free to let me know).  I think these efforts to allow beauty to grow for everyone that will help battle injustice.  Music allows us to express and become directly aware of our emotions without words getting in the way.  Music inspires us to become part of something bigger, whether collaborating in a choir or symphony, or jumping up and down with fellow enthusiasts at a rock concert.  And when we are in concert with other people to make or appreciate beauty, we will be less far less likely to treat these other people unjustly.

Are there unjust uses of music? I will attempt to tackle this question soon.

Sing We Our Praise of Idolatry

Today while I was running in the park, I listened to a PRI's The World story about a popular Indian song, "Vande Mataram," and recent Muslim opposition to it. Some clerics have issued a fatwah against singing the song, as the first line is about bowing down to the motherland. This is interpreted as idolatry by some (but not all) Muslims, particularly since "Motherland" is considered a goddess by Hindus. Disregarding the theological arguments for a second, I think it is healthy for any patriotic movement within a country to have a vocal opposition. If all Indians fell lockstep into beatifying their country, that could lead down the slippery slope to regarding other countries as inferior, and thus ready for conquest. Descriptions of the song reminded of other jingo-esque jingles, including some of the songs I sang (the videos are not of me, just a representative of the songs) as a member of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia. A friend who was not in the fraternity pointed out to me that most of the songs were basically saying "look how awesome we are, we are the greatest group of guys around." Which implies that anyone who is not a member of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia is not awesome. These kind of songs are great morale boosters, but they also strengthen boundaries between "us" and "them". So it is good to prick those boundaries with opposing viewpoints from within the "us".

And now for some politics...

Today's Indianapolis Star had a front-page article about a Purdue University professor who blogs on conservative issues. Bert Chapman is the Government Information & Political Science Librarian and a Professor of Library Science at Purdue. The reason he made the news is for writing a post called "An Economic Case Against Homosexuality." A grad student discovered the blog post and reported Chapman to the university's Office for Institutional Equality, leading to protests in the campus newspaper and onward to the local news.

I agree with the university's decision that Prof. Chapman did not violate any rules, and therefore should not be punished. He put up a required disclaimer stating that his views do not represent those of Purdue University, and thus far there is no evidence that his political and social views have corrupted his professional behavior. I do disagree with a few of the other conservative bloggers cited in the IndyStar article who criticize the students and professors at Purdue for protesting against Chapman's homophobic views. Jonathan Katz calls the protests "bullying and an attempt at censorship." From the perspectives of students at Purdue, the majority of the protests are not attempting to get Chapman fired, or even to get him to take down his blog post. Instead the protests were a means of disputing the facts put forth by Chapman, thus continuing the debate. Sadly, many people who say controversial things get upset when other people have the temerity to disagree loudly and publicly. It would be bullying if Professor Chapman had expressed his opinions at a small dinner party, and found his remarks being protested in the newspapers and on campus afterward. But he made his viewpoints quite public through a popular conservative site (TownHall.com), so any response that attempts at equal footing must be made loudly.

As for the merits of Professor Chapman's "case," I see several problems. First, AIDS. This is not a homosexuals-only disease, nor only spread through "morally aberrant sexual behavior (including heterosexual promiscuity in Africa and elsewhere)." Blood transfusions, shared needles, these also spread HIV. And even if you could make the argument that we could wipe out AIDS by discouraging promiscuity, that is an argument FOR homosexual marriage. What is marriage but a social encouragement to be monogamous? Surely Professor Chapman doesn't think that people will simply stop having sex if they can't get married. The lack of social acceptance for homosexual relationships in the past drove gay people to casual, promiscuous relationships that did indeed help to spread AIDS. The fear of being caught prevented any attempts at long-term relationships, but the physical desires for sex could not be simply ignored. These are historical facts, along with the fact that gay couples have the same rate of breaking up as cohabiting heterosexual couples (16 and 17% respectively), while married couples have a break up rate of 4%. You want homosexual people to stop being promiscuous and thus stop spreading AIDS? Get them married! This also corresponds to Chapman's concerns about the economic costs of STDs in general.

Second, prison rape. Rape has nothing to do with gender preference, and everything to do with power. Just as heterosexual rape does not equate at all with a loving heterosexual relationship, prison rape does not equate at all with a loving homosexual relationship.

Third, health insurance. Ignoring the odd complaint of a self-avowed Christian that helping others with health insurance keeps him from getting more health insurance (Jesus would not be happy with that argument, see his views on the poor and how to get into heaven), these companies and and universities that offer domestic partner coverage are not being forced to by any government concerns, it is purely through the "invisible hand" of economics, which isn't that invisible. All market pressures are really social pressures, and these companies/universities have decided that they will either get better employees or look better socially and get more customers/better students from offering these benefits. Yes, some organizations might be driven by individual political beliefs, but if society – and thus the economy – did not support those beliefs then those organizations would fail.

Fourth, providing other services. Chapman's last full paragraph doesn't make any sense. If life insurance companies have more people to cover, the insurance pool is increased, thus reducing risk, and thus costs would decrease. In fact, insurance companies would make more money because of more potential policies to sell, and the increase in profits helps the economy. Likewise with lawyers and divorces or other legal considerations. Lawyers will have more opportunities to make money, so they won't have to create as high a profit margin, so our costs go down (or at least stay the same). And if the lawyers are making higher profits, the economy grows.

People were concerned about the economic costs of allowing women to work full-time. People were concerned about the economic costs of allowing slaves to go free. Economic costs were used to justify discrimination against Jews, Italians, Irish, Blacks, Hispanics, and any other minority group. These proposed economic costs never proved out. By expanding the number of people invited to participate in society, the society and thus the economy grows.

I hope Professor Chapman fully considers both the economic arguments against his position, and the myriad ethical and moral arguments against his stance.

You should see him tap dance

Sorry Phil, I don't know if I have anything smart to say about Auto-Tune the News, but I do want to give a shout out to my former Congressman Steve Buyer for that awesome song about smoking lettuce. I don't think my new representative, Brad Ellsworth, has been given a solo yet.

Okay, my attempt at something smart. I actually found the arguments easier to follow, perhaps because of the repetition and slowing down both the rate of syllables and the rate of content. Plus the Auto-tuning made many of the voices far less annoying (Palin and Kristol, I'm looking at you). And four-part harmony makes everything better.

What is Boring Art?

Chad Orzel has opened up a can o' worms in looking at the latest NEA study bemoaning the deterioration of arts attendance. I'm not happy about the "boring" in the title, but I do agree that studies like these create artificial boundaries, especially in regards to music. The study only looked at classical, jazz, and opera music performances for music, and also did not consider any performances by elementary or high school ensembles. Chad's college students still count. There are questions later about school performances, as well as religious music.The results are based upon surveying people, and leaves definitions up to them, with little guidance. So the question on classical music reads: "[With the exception of elementary or high school performances] Did you go to a live classical music performance such as symphony, chamber, or choral music [during the last 12 months?]" What about the Bang on a Can marathon? Some attendees there would call it indy music, others would call the same performance chamber music. There is a later question that captures any sort of music festival: "Did you visit an outdoor festival that featured performing artists?" Today I was listening to Fresh Air, and Terry Gross was interviewing Janelle Monae. She is labeled as a hiphop artist, but the music I heard was jazzy musical theater. And what about musical theater, which is also surveyed as "live musical stage play"? Rent is musical theater and hard rock. Same with Hair and Tommy. My guess, based on the wording of the question, is that people would call those three shows live musical stage plays, but those same people would not count a performance of Tommy by the Who back in the 70's. Nowadays the borders between genres is blurry at best, as mentioned by Mark Swed in a review of the recent Ojai Music Festival. So Chad is correct that attendance at any sort of live music performance should be counted, as should attendance at performance art happenings that aren't part of outdoor festivals.

However, looking deeper in the survey, almost all the criticisms made by Chad or his commenters are covered in the actual study, just not in the brochure or the media coverage. There are questions about musical preference that include other genres. The survey includes "Classical or Chamber, Opera, Broadway/Show Tunes, Jazz, Classic Rock/Oldies, Contemporary Rock, Rap/Hip-hop, Blues/Rhythm and Blues, Latin/Spanish/Salsa, Country, Bluegrass, Folk Music, Hymns/Gospel, Other." And the survey includes downloading or streaming performances of "music, theater or dance" and images of "paintings, sculpture or photography" from the Internet. There is personal creativity: "Did you use the Internet to create or post your own art online including design, music, photography, films, video, or creative writing?" And consuming art in recorded or broadcast format (though that is limited to the "high arts", no movies or TV shows). As for commenters at Chad's blog who critique the study for ignoring literature, it doesn't. TThe survey includes reading books that aren't required for work or school and tallied whether they were Novels/Short Stories, Poetry, or Plays, and genres (Mysteries, Thrillers, Romance, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Other Fiction, Self-Improvement, Religious texts, History/Political, Biographies, Other Non-Fiction, Other). They also include questions on reading online materials, books-on-tape, and writing your own materials. However, movies and television shows are not covered in the survey.

Jazz in the White House

First Lady Michelle Obama hosted a Jazz Studio today for middle and high school students. Jazz greats like the Marsalis family and Paquito D'Rivera played along with students and led seminars. It is very cool that the White House is doing things to highlight culture, including their date on Broadway.

inauguration music

I missed the music before the inauguration proceedings. On the American Musicology Society E-list, Alexandra Amati-Camperi says that the Marines were joined by the San Francisco Boys and Girls Choruses to sing six songs, included a world premiere of a piece by David Conte. This new work, called "An Exhortation," uses words from President Obama's victory speech on November 4th:

America, we have come so far.
We have seen so much.
But there is so much more to do.
Let us ask ourselves:
If our children should live to see
The next century
What progress will we have made?
This is our chance to answer that call.
This is our time
To reaffirm that fundamental truth
That out of many, we are one;
That while we breathe, we hope;
And where we are met with doubt,
We will respond with that timeless creed
That sums up the spirit of a people:
Yes We Can.

I don't know when these performances occurred exactly. I started watching CNN at 11:15, and they were only showing all of the muckity-mucks processing along.

At first I was disappointed to see that John Williams' new piece was an arrangement of the Shaker tune "Simple Gifts." I wished that it would be a completely new piece. But then I started thinking about the many "occasional" pieces that exist in history. Handel stole from himself in writing birthday music for Queen Mary. Johann Schein composed pieces for 'various occasions' that had been 'completed in haste'. People like Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms composed variations on themes by other composers. So why not have John Williams pick a quintessentially American tune (thanks to Copland) to make a lighter occasional piece. There were some nice gestures in Williams' composition, especially the quiet ending. I wonder if it will have legs, I kind of doubt it.

Back to the American Musicology Society List (AMS-L), another (Canadian!) music historian (Jim Deaville) pointed out that Vincent Persichetti was commissioned to compose a work, Lincoln Address for Nixon's second inauguration. Persichetti set words from Lincoln's second inaugural address, including the reference to the Civil War as a "mighty scourge." The Presidential Inaugural Committee felt this could be interpreted as an allusion to the ongoing Vietnam War, and therefore replaced Lincoln Address with Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture. So, replacing reference to one war with another war. Ah well.

Inauguration stuff

I'm very excited about the upcoming inauguration.  I just saw an announcement of an opening celebration 2 days before the actual ceremony, to be held at the Lincoln Memorial.  Classical music is represented at this event by Renee Fleming, but what I find quite interesting is that Bishop Gene Robinson will be giving the invocation.  He is the openly-gay Episcopalian Bishop of New Hampshire, whose elevation to the episcopate caused a riot among conservative Anglicans across the world, though mostly in Africa and in the US.  The selection of Robinson++ should calm the fears of many who were concerned about Rick Warren, and apparently I am correct.

At the actual inauguration ceremony, a new piece composed by John Williams will be performed by Itzhak Perlman (violin), Gabriela Montero (piano), Anthony McGill (clarinet) and Yo-Yo Ma (cello).  They will play between the oaths of Biden and Obama, so a very prominent spot.  I wish someone other than John Williams had been picked to compose the work, I'm afraid it will be rather Olympic in nature.  But then, his music in the film Munich was very interesting, so maybe I'm selling him short.

Politics and Music

Jeremy Denk has scored a great coup: an interview with Sarah Palin about the Hammerklavier Sonata. I look forward to hearing it set to music.



This one is even better:

Bigger than I thought

Today's Indy Star reports that the local police counted over 35,000 at the rally yesterday. Here are pictures. I'm the one wearing an Obama t-shirt.

Obama rally Downtown - More IndyStar Galleries

View this gallery at IndyStar: Obama rally Downtown

Chord Changes We Can Believe In

Wordless Music is presenting a benefit concert for the Barack Obama campaign, featuring pianist Brad Mehldau and mandolinist Chris Thile. They will be performing music by Bach, Brahms, Mehldau, and Thile tomorrow (October 10) at 11 pm (late concert!) at Le Poisson Rouge in New York. Tickets are $25 and $50 general admission, preferred seating tickets at $75 each, with all proceeds going to the campaign. Click on the link above to purchase tickets.

___ for Obama

When I was looking for reactions to last night's debate, I came across this website selling Obama buttons. Relevant to the topic of this blog are the following:

And my favorite:

Barackmaninoff

This last weekend I went to Terre Haute to take part in the opening of the local Obama/Democratic Party campaign headquarters, one of twenty here in Indiana. It was amazing to see how many of us were new to campaign volunteering. I'm doing it because Barack Obama treats us like adults. He isn't afraid of nuance, and shows that he has both learned a great deal about all the relevant issues and is open minded to learning more. His speech on race relations sold it for me, and made me decide I want to work hard to help him get elected. In 2000 I was living in the very red North Dakota, so had no hope that my vote would help Al Gore get elected. In 2004 I was living here in Indiana, and again had no hope that my vote would help John Kerry. But this year, Indiana's 11 electoral votes could actually go to Barack Obama. Polls are running neck and neck. So I'm volunteering, and set up a fundraising page. Go donate $25, and take power away from the "Pioneers" who bundle over $100,000 to buy influence with the politicians.

The Political Art Beat

Good thing I included Darcy James Argue on my top 50+ list this time (he's #20). He will be representing ALL of us at the Netroots Nation convention in Austin, thus he will be the face of the arts for all those wacky liberals. Not really, as classical music already has an inside man for liberal blogging, in the form of Richard Einhorn, aka Tristero of Digby's Hullabaloo. However, I can't tell whether Tristero is attending Netroots Nation along with his blogging partner. Hey Darcy, can you get an autograph from Markos for me?

Rhythm as signifier

I just watched a new political ad by the Democratic National Committee, showing how John McCain has changed his estimates of how long American troops will be in Iraq. No new information, but the background music is fascinating. At first I thought it was in an asymmetric meter, or more likely a changing meter, with 12/8 as the predominant meter mixed up with a 2/4 or 9/8 to make it sound clumsy. But it is more subtle than that. The music stays in 12/8 for the whole time. What gives this insidious feeling of incompetence is the use of syncopation. The upper strings at points sound like they are slowing down, though they always end on the right beat. The bass line at a few points shifts to an almost duple, but it isn't exactly duple, thus making it even more uneasy. But what is truly amazing is that the musicians demonstrate a real skill in playing complex rhythms that purposely sound wrong. Thus they are really good at sounding bad. I want to know who wrote this music.

Bob Dylan, Attorney at Law

A family member and Dylanophile sent me this interesting International Herald Tribune story about Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts citing the Bard of Duluth in his dissent last week:

''The absence of any right to the substantive recovery means that respondents cannot benefit from the judgment they seek and thus lack Article III standing,'' Roberts wrote. '''When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose.' Bob Dylan, Like a Rolling Stone, on Highway 61 Revisited (Columbia Records 1965).''

Alex Long, a law professor at the University of Tennessee and perhaps the nation's leading authority on the citation of popular music in judicial opinions, said this was almost certainly the first use of a rock lyric to buttress a legal proposition in a Supreme Court decision. ''It's a landmark opinion,'' Long said.

Is this truly meant to be convincing? As the article points out, Roberts doesn't use the quote with the meaning Dylan had intended. Roberts twists a statement of anti-materialism into a justification for protecting a phone company's money. So why even bother quoting from a poet/songwriter with whom Roberts clearly doesn't agree? My guess is that Roberts is trying to fool himself, either that he is cooler than he really is, or that there is some poetic truth to his money-grubbing ways. Either way, it is just sad.

You're intellectual in PUBLIC?

The magazine Foreign Policy has produced a list of the top 100 public intellectuals. Sadly, there are no musicians on the list at all. No artists either. There are a few novelists and one playwrite, apparently one must use words to be intellectual. One of the elite, Jacques Attali, did write a book called Noise: The Political Economy of Music. I'm sure it didn't hurt that he is also an editor for the same magazine that made the list. But it is sad that artists are not viewed as intellectual by political figures. There is much truth in art, all of it meant for public consumption. Ahh, I'm too tired to continue. To bed, hoping that my cats will finish my grading for me. It's not like they go to sleep!

Earth Day

For Earth Day you can download some free eco-oriented music by Chris Blake. Here is what Chris has to say:

Other featured songs off my brand new album WAVE include “How Journey Saved My Life." True story.

My last CD lent songs to several indie films, including "Silent Hearts" starring Marianne Jean-Baptiste. But the closest I ever came to stardom (or infamy) was when I almost hit Bono with my car in Westwood Village one foggy night. True story.

I also helped invent MySpace, and if you look real close at the white board behind Tom Anderson, you'll see some notes on how they planned to cut me loose and steal all my ideas. I've since formed a secret society with Divya Narendra and the Winklevosses.

Okay, so that last bit wasn't really true, but I should at least get some bonus points for sending a pitch that mentions the Winklevosses.

You can also celebrate by looking at the latest issue of Music and Politics. Read Derek Katz's review of recent recordings that mix politics into the ... er ... mix, like Neil Rolnick's Playing Well With Others featuring "Georgie" and "Dickie", or Virgil Thomson's soundtracks to The Plow That Broke the Plain and The River.

And if you live in Pennsylvania, go vote today. The earth will thank you.